Sampsonia Way in Brussels

Brussel’s Town Hall, where the Mayor of Brussels, Freddy Thielemans, welcomed members of Halma, PEN International, and ICORN

Last week, Brussels, Belgium was an epicenter of international literature and a meeting point for literary freedom of speech.

As part of the biannual Passa Porta Literary Festival, organizations like the International Cities of Refugees Network (ICORN), the PEN’s Writers in Prison Committees (WiPC), and the literary centers’ network in Europe, Halma, had their own annual meetings while sharing some workshops and attending a common opening event.

Sampsonia Way managing editor, Silvia Duarte, traveled there and met some writers, organizers, and representatives from all the organizations in attendance. In the following weeks we will publish interviews, speeches, readings, debates, and discussions that took place in the Belgian capital.

Read a Conversation on Translation. Dalkey Archive Press’ publisher John O’Brien talked to three authors featured in Best European Fiction: Igor Štiks from Croatia, Gonçalo M. Tavares from Portugal, and Peter Terrin from Belgium.

About the Author

Silvia Duarte is the managing editor of Sampsonia Way. She received her degree in Communication Sciences from Rafael Landivar University in Guatemala and her masters in Latin American studies from the Autonomous University of Madrid in Spain. Duarte was editor of El Periódico de Guatemala’s Sunday magazine from 2001 to 2006 and has written scholarly and journalistic articles in Germany, Spain, and the United States. She came to Pittsburgh in 2007 with her partner writer-in-exile Horacio Castellanos.

Sponsor

About Sampsonia Way

Sampsonia Way is an online magazine sponsored by City of Asylum/Pittsburgh that seeks to protect and advocate for writers who may be endangered, to educate the public about threats to writers and literary expression, and to create a community in which endangered writers thrive and literary culture is a valued part of life.